Research Bible: Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed

When I began the Research Bible, I didn’t imagine I would eventually pull in advice columns from the internet. But when I stumbled upon Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar columns, all I could think was “How. Have. I. Not. Read. This. Til. Now.” I felt like I was injecting anabolic steroids directly into my bloodstream. A few of the columns I read two or three times, just to remind myself of how much actionable material was there.

Below are some of my favorites.

Me reading Dear Sugar for the first time

Write Like a Motherfucker

Wow! So much wisdom here, but I love this for one simple message: all of us are so young, so arrogant, and need to just put our heads down and do the work that our lofty goals demand of us. Like many of the columns, the professional context is of a writer, but it’s applicable to any field.

The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core. It presumes you should be successful at twenty-six, when really it takes most writers so much longer to get there. It laments that you’ll never be as good as David Foster Wallace—a genius, a master of the craft—while at the same time describing how little you write. You loathe yourself, and yet you’re consumed by the grandiose ideas you have about your own importance. You’re up too high and down too low. Neither is the place where we get any work done.

The Future Has an Ancient Heart

I read this “graduation speech” and immediately sent it out to a handful of people, some who are graduating but some who are not. I wish I had read this as a college senior, because it embodies so much of what I’m only just now coming to understand: you can’t possibly put your finger on what the future will look like.

You’re going to be all right not because you majored in English or didn’t and not because you plan to apply to law school or don’t, but because all right is almost always where we eventually land, even if we fuck up entirely along the way.

Tiny Beautiful Things

Advice to Sugar’s twenty year old self.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life.

Say thank you.

The Bad Things You Did

The only person we hurt by not forgiving ourselves is us.

The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you’ve not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you’re still invested in your self-loathing… Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and thief, does that make you good?

We Are All Savages Inside

I deal with envy all the time. Anyone who scrolls LinkedIn or Instagram knows what I’m talking about. Someone gets promoted years before we do… “That guy? He was an idiot at school! And he dresses like shit. Something’s wrong here.” Something is definitely wrong here, but the problem is our entitlement, as Sugar points out.

You might, for example, be interested to know that the word prestigious is derived from the Latin praestigiae, which means conjuror’s tricks. Isn’t that interesting? This word that we use to mean honorable and esteemed has its beginnings in a word that has everything to do with illusion and deception and trickery. Does that mean anything to you, Awful Jealous Person? Because when I found that out, every tuning fork inside of me went hum. Could it be possible that the reason you feel like you swallowed a spoonful of battery acid every time someone else gets what you want is because a long time ago—way back in your own very beginnings—you were sold a bill of goods about the relationship between money and success, fame and authenticity, legitimacy and adulation?

Romantic Love Is Not a Competitive Sport

Accepting the discomfort that comes with intimacy in a relationship.

I know it’s a kick in the pants to hear that the problem is you, but it’s also fucking fantastic. You are, after all, the only person you can change.

A Big Life

Why it can be more liberating to be freed from our parents’ financial support than to continue being propped up by it.

You know the best thing about paying your own bills? No one can tell you what to do with your money. You say your parents are emotionally unsupportive. You say you’re weary of their intentions. You say they don’t see you for the vibrant woman that you are. Well, the moment you sign that paper absolving them of their financial obligation to your debts, you are free. You may love them, you may despise them, you may choose to have whatever sort of relationship you choose to have with them, but you are no longer beholden to them in this one particular and important way. You are financially accountable only to yourself. If they express disdain for the jobs you have or the way you spend your money, you can rightly tell them it’s none of their damn business. They have absolutely no power over you in this regard. No one does. That’s a mighty liberating thing.

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